


Hand in Mine (But Only When You're Sleeping)

by OverMyFreckledBody



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: (both the writing and the setting hah!), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bunker Fluff, Fluff, Late at Night, M/M, Pining, Sleepkissing, is that a thing? it is now, marcos happy i swear, no mouth to mouth though unfortunately, uh its cute? kind of? not sad really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 01:57:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6219139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverMyFreckledBody/pseuds/OverMyFreckledBody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, maybe Marco has a problem. Maybe he likes it when Jean cuddles up against his arm as it dangles from the bunk in his sleep. That's not bad, right?</p><p>It's not bad to take comfort in the fact that he's not the only one hiding something, too, is it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hand in Mine (But Only When You're Sleeping)

**Author's Note:**

> ... I swear to god, this isn't the au that you probably think it is. I swear. 
> 
> It's not even remotely college. Promise.
> 
> Summer camp? Sure. Maybe even canonverse.
> 
> ...
> 
> I'm ashamed of myself.

It was a problem, Marco knew it was.

 

That didn’t stop him from doing it. It wasn’t even like it was harmful in any way (well, aside from being so to his ego, of course, when that stupid clock began to shriek, but that wasn’t what he was trying to get at), so it couldn’t have really been that much of a big deal. Plus, alongside the fact that it had been going on quite routinely for a while, if it _was_ brought up, he had his excuses ready, just in case.

 

Like, the beds were small. They really were. That’s how the problem had originally started, anyway. He was a big guy, and just because Jean could fit into his bed with his pillow and everything didn’t mean that _he_ could. Not everyone likes hugging their huge ass body pillow against themselves and curling against it. Marco might have liked to cuddle, sure, but apparently not as much as _that_ boy.

 

Off topic, kind of.

 

Jean’s lack of physical contact issues (Marco was actually working on that) aside, Marco knew he was prepared for anything that was asked about the situation.

 

… That honestly kind of made it sound worse than just a simple _problem_. He didn’t _have_ to cover it up, he knew that. He was really doing it for Jean’s sake. After all, Jean took part in making it a bigger mess anyway, and normally Marco wouldn’t have even considered it as so, just thinking it was a friend thing, if it weren’t for what seemed to happen every morning. That… didn’t seem to be much of a friend thing - and Marco wasn’t even thinking about the stuff that happened _before_ he woke up. He just chalked that part up to being asleep and having a nice warm body to cuddle against.

 

See, the problem was that ever since they had crawled into their small bunks and woken up the next morning to a small (but now known and pretty familiar) disturbance, it kept happening. Marco, being in the tiny bedding, would kind of tend to… hang off the side. Only his arm, though (well, and his leg kind of, otherwise it would be both the ends of his feet - who the hell designed these shitty things anyway? Hobbits?). And then, Jean would tend to… snuggle up against it.

 

He’d kissed the palm of it, once. As much as Marco tried to burn the memory, for the sake of his friend’s own happiness (though he didn’t know that Marco knew), it stuck to him like feathers to glue, and he often found it loitering in his mind as soon as he scrambled into his bed and often when he woke up.

 

What made it less than friendship-y (not counting Jean’s little smooching on his skin) was that when he woke up to the alarm and noticed that Marco’s hand was splayed comfortably against his cheek, he’d bat it away like he was disgusted with his actions before righting himself and sliding off the bed to get ready for the day. Marco only knew this because his body had a weird system of learning when the alarm was about to ring after being set on the same time for a few months and he woke up a few minutes before it went off, every day. So, instead of being greeted by the obnoxious screeches of the damned box, he was treated to the feeling of Jean gentle puffs of breath skimming across his fingers and sometimes a little drool sliding amongst them.

 

When it first started happening, he already knew Jean clung to his pillow as if it was his lover in the dead of night and just assumed that that was what had happened with his hand, but the panic in the way his hand was knocked away as if he knew Marco was awake and admiring the soft skin against his own told Marco that Jean thought otherwise.

 

He wasn’t going to bring it up himself, either, how stupid would that be? _Hey, I’ve been kind of liking the way you drool on me in your sleep and I kind of want it to be my shoulder instead of just my hand, so… How do you feel about that?_ wouldn’t be the best way to go about it. It’d just make him sound like a creeper.

 

Not to mention that he wouldn’t even know how Jean would react to that. See, outside of their weird nighttime face holding, Jean showed no sign of desiring Marco in a more than strictly platonic way. Most, if not all, of their contact was initiated by Marco and sometimes even halted by Jean, the boy didn’t really look at him intently when he was speaking (he barely raised his head half the time to show he was listening), he didn’t stare at him lovingly when there were comfortable silences, he didn’t blush when Marco nudged him, nothing.

 

(Those were all things that Marco instead found himself doing to Jean and then later noticing that they weren’t returned actions.)

 

The only reason why Marco even seemed to have most of Jean’s time was because one, he didn’t really like other people much and didn’t care for finding a whole lot of other friends. Two, he was quiet when Jean wanted to read over things (which was often). And three, he laughed at Jean’s dry and occasionally dark humor. Not a lot of people did that, which was surprising, because when Marco cracked those jokes later around them, a lot of them found them amusing.

 

He remembered asking Jean what he dreamed about, since Marco rarely recalled any of his own (which was a lie - he had woken up with sticky boxers just a few days before and all of the contents of _that_ dream were safely secured in a part of his mind that only opened up when he was alone and usually in the shower). It was an attempt to see if he dreamed about Marco, or even _anyone_ special.

 

Unsurprisingly, it had backfired, with Jean launching into a detailed description of basically the things he read, but with himself inserted into them. From what Marco could tell, Jean’s character didn’t seem to have any romantic (or sexual) interest and all the characters were conveniently paired up as well (through Jean’s apparent shipping goggles). As useful as it wasn’t, it was still interesting to listen to.

 

All of it was a problem, really, but the thing that he _could_ deal with (but just didn’t) and had excuses for if it became a discussion topic wasn’t his crush, wasn’t inability to accept it was probably unrequited, but was instead that he let Jean sleep against his arm, even if it was numb and practically bloodless by the time they got out of their bunks. But, it was Marco’s problem.

  
He just took comfort in the fact that, as Jean pressed closer, smearing saliva all over his cheek and Marco’s palm, in a few minutes there would be his morning reminder that he wasn’t the only one with one.

**Author's Note:**

> And this has been another episode of: OMFB Can't Focus on Writing What She Promised, What the Hell is New Shit?  
> See you next time.
> 
> snk/writing tumblr right [here](http://overmyfreckledbody.tumblr.com/). rebloggable post of this fic is [here.](http://overmyfreckledbody.tumblr.com/post/140847600788/yep-this-right-here-is-my-bad-decision-dont)
> 
> Since you made it this far, be sure to leave a kudos! And if you liked it, it'd be really cool if you left a comment, too. Thanks for reading!


End file.
